Bluetooth 5 transceivers are self-powered

Atmosic took a wireless agnostic approach to determine the most power-efficient foundation for its first IoT connectivity solutions. To radically reduce power consumption, Atmosic has developed three key technologies: Lowest Power Radio, On-demand Wake-up, and Controlled Energy Harvesting. With Lowest Power Radio and On-demand Wake-Up, Atmosic enables 10X to 100X lower power, reducing power utilization to a level that Controlled Energy Harvesting is a viable power source. With the addition of Controlled Energy Harvesting, the solution can deliver forever battery life or battery-free operation.

Lowest Power Radio is based on the team’s extensive wireless and low-power experience, which has enabled Atmosic to achieve radical power performance improvements while maintaining full standards compliance.

To create On-demand Wake-Up, Atmosic has implemented two levels of listening: one provides the lowest level of “radio consciousness” to perceive incoming transmissions; the other is a deep sleeper, waking only when alerted to incoming transmissions by the “radio consciousness” portion. On-demand Wake-Up requires coordination with the host, which would send a special pattern to wake-up, causing Atmosic ICs within range to wake-up. While this may cause some radios to wake-up unnecessarily, the number of wakeups will still be vastly lower than a typical beacon’s 86,400 wake-ups per day based on a time interval of one second.

Instead of relying on ambient energy harvesting, which is inherently unpredictable, Atmosic’s Controlled Energy Harvesting technology is based on a known energy source that can be controlled to guarantee robust, deterministic functionality while minimizing the system dependence on battery power. The technology can work in the 2.4GHz or 900MHz bands. As an example, a computer could be used to emit a deterministic RF energy source for a mouse or wireless keyboard in close proximity.

For its first products, Atmosic recently unveiled the industry’s lowest power standards-compliant wireless Bluetooth 5 platforms, according to the company, comprising the M2 and M3 series. Bluetooth 5 provides performance increases over legacy Bluetooth by 4X the range (now comparable to Wi-Fi), 2X the speed, and 8X the bandwidth.

The Atmosic M2 Series Bluetooth 5 SoC features Lowest Power Radio delivering 5X to 10X lower power; the addition of On-demand Wake-up reduces power by 10X to 100X. The Atmosic M3 Series Bluetooth 5 SoC adds Controlled Energy Harvesting to provide forever battery life or eliminate the need for battery power. Packaging options for the M2 and M3 Series include flash and non-flash, 5×5 QFN, and 6×6 DRQFN packages. The ICs incorporate an Arm Cortex-M0 processor and assorted peripherals to form a complete solution.

www.atmosic.com